Broken Dreams
by Chris Votulle
Summary: The last survivor of OZT reflects about how it all went wrong.


**DISCLAIMER:** All characters mentioned below are the property of 

Marvel Comics. I am simply using them for fun (ie, no profit is being made from this). 

NOTE: This story takes place after the events on Generation X #29 and diverges from continuity there. 

* * *

Broken Dreams

By[Chris Votulle][1], July 

1997 

Dear Diary, 

Hello. I know I haven't written for a long time now and I'm sorry. I don't mean 

to neglect you, but you just wouldn't believe all of the things that have been 

happening to me lately. I think you would understand my neglect if you knew. 

But, then again, you would know if I hadn't neglected you. This is starting to make 

very little sense. It just goes to show that I shouldn't try to write at three 

o'clock in the morning. I mean, I usually consider myself a morning person, but 

when you've stayed up all night I guess it isn't really considered morning. 

Just really late at night. Like, as in the late late late late show. Please ignore the 

sentence fragments. I'm too tired to care anymore. 

Where was I? I don't know. Was I anywhere, really? That's a good question. 

Where exactly am I headed with my life? I've been so busy chasing shadows that 

I've never bothered to look at the light. I've sacrificed my life for the dream. Or so 

I thought. The funny thing is that I never really thought about the dream and what 

exactly it stood for. _The dream_. How ominous that sounds. My dream was to simply 

outdo my brother. It didn't matter how. It didn't matter why, as long as I 

did it. But why did I do it? Am I so insecure that I need to outshine my big brother 

in order to feel complete? Or am I just over-ambitious? Over confident is 

more like it. Oh sure, I'm extremely hard on myself and I'm the last to acknowledge when 

I've excelled in something, but in real life situations I'm extremely self-centered. I 

automatically assume that everyone needs me to take charge. What made me ever think that 

I was fit to be a leader? Why did everyone let me go on believing it? My whole 

life is built on false hopes and unfulfilled dreams -- including _the_ big one. 

Even if I didn't truly embrace it at the time. I now 

know what the dream is all about and I've failed it miserably. We all have. 

Mutants and humans living together. In peace. We couldn't even manage it in one 

household. What with Joelle going off to join the FoH and Sam fighting evil or whatever 

with his precious X-Men. Two complete opposites of the spectrum, with every other 

kind of chaos in between. And Ma wondered why I wanted to leave so desperately. I was 

stupid enough to think that it would be better somewhere else. That goes to show how little 

I really know, doesn't it? Here I am in a school for 'Gifted Youngsters' where we're 

supposed to be taught how to achieve this dream of peace and yet our most important lessons 

involve learning how to fight effectively by mastering our powers. I can't imagine why 

this didn't disturb me at the onset. I guess I was just too absorbed with myself once again. I 

didn't care what I was doing as I long as I was the best. If I admit that I'm not the 

best now, cam I change it all back? No. Dammit, no. Nothing ever changes. 

I finally understand that. 

Maybe it would help if I just got down to what was really bothering me. That's what 

I intended to do, but setting it down on paper makes it all a little too real for 

me. It started in Los Angeles, when Zero Tolerance finally caught up with us. In 

case you don't know, Operation: Zero Tolerance is basically humanity's way of taking 

the dream and standing it on it's head. No, make that kicking it out the door. 

Squashing it under it's heel. I'm rambling. To make it short, people decided that 

they hated mutants and that they weren't going to _tolerate_ them anymore so they 

were going to kill them all. Complete and total genocide. Could the dream 

have failed any more completely? Could we possibly be any further from achieving peace? 

I don't think so. 

Where did we go wrong? I can't answer that, but I suppose that I know where _I_

went wrong. We were on the run from those Nimrod things. That Tores girl who was friends with Angleo 

managed to hide us somehow, but we all knew that we couldn't hide forever. 

Everyone seemed lost without our mentors to guide us so I assumed control. 

After all, _I_ was going to be the leader of the X-Men one day. Not anymore I'm not. 

Anyway, normally Jono or M would have protested my take-charge attitude, but we were 

all so distraught I think they welcomed the chance to have the burden placed on someone 

else's shoulders. We waited until dark and then decided to make a run for it. Tores 

said that she knew where we could get some wheels so we could head back to Snow Valley or 

even New Salem. Actually, I was just concerned about getting out of Los Angeles at 

the time. We didn't even make it ten feet though. Those damn Sentinels were 

just waiting for us. I should have seen it coming. Some leader I was! I guess 

we relied on M's telepathy to tell us if something was amiss for so long that we 

overlooked the fact that Nimrods aren't alive. Not really, anyway. I don't really 

remember what happened. I just remember waking up among a mass of dead bodies, and 

they were all people I knew. Next to me was Jono, Ev, Ange, and M. A little ways away 

I could see Jubes and Mr. Cassidy. But that wasn't all. Mr. And Mrs. Summers were there, 

and with them was Sam. Oh God, I just took it for granted for so long that Sam couldn't die. 

When you brother is immortal his death tends to hit you very hard. 

There was no doubt that he was dead though. The monsters must have known that he was an 

external because they removed his head from his body. Here was the boy -- no, the 

man whom I had been chasing after my entire life. I wanted so much to be like him. 

He was my idol, my protector, at one time my best friend. And now he's dead. 

They're all dead. Except for me. 

Why am I alive? It's simple really. I suppose that Sam wasn't the only external in the 

family. They mustn't have known that or else my head would surely be gone too. 

I wish it was. What's left for me now? A life on the run? A life that never 

ends and no one to share it with? I don't even have the luxury of committing suicide. 

Maybe I'll turn myself in and hope they kill me quickly. Hope they _can_ kill me. 

It's funny, Sam's dead now and I still envy him. Nothing ever changes. Nothing ever will. 

Paige  


   [1]: mailto:cvotulle@vt.edu



End file.
